Excerpt: Excess? The German Army of WW II somehow managed to fight off for six years – that, or beat the ever loving crap out of – nearly the whole world with under three percent commissioned officers.2 Roman legions, perhaps the most formidable fighting machines of human history, got by with six to eight. Six to eight percent? Not on your life; six to eight, period, six military tribunes, a legate, and – arguably – the praefectus castrorum, who was more in the line of a late entry officer, as per the British system.3 Think about that one, one officer per every eight hundred men. And it was plenty. What have we got? As of 2013 we had over eleven percent commissioned in the Marine Corps, seventeen percent in the Navy, almost nineteen percent in the Army, and nearly twenty percent of strength being commissioned officers in the Air Force.4 The problems with having this many officers are multifold. I can only cover some of the more important ones. This high a percentage of officers almost certainly means that there are people running around with bars and leaves and even eagles and perhaps stars who probably should have been non-coms. (Tom Kratman is a retired USA LtCol, an occasional contributor to this blog, and an outstand author of military science fiction, including the A Desert Called Peace series. http://www.amazon.com/Desert-Called-Peace-Carrera-Book-ebook/dp/B00B5HJOFY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426715332&sr=8-1&keywords=Peace+Kratman ~Bob)

Excerpt: It’s time the Democratic presidential contenders get treated like the Republican presidential contenders. Republican candidates are often asked questions by reporters that attempt to paint them as out of step with the culture. That’s fine, but only if Democratic candidates face similar queries. Below are 12 such questions that should be asked at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas:

This is an important video to watch and share - especially with those who exult monsters like Che Guevara, naively. If the first part of the Biblical verse, Hosea 4:6: "My people perish for lack of knowledge..." can be applied universally, we can then also see why those who exult and emulate people like Mao Tse Tung, Che Guevara and others without knowing who they truly were and the atrocities they committed are doomed to either become like them, or to become victims of their ideologies. The very people who seek these detestable historic figures as a measure of defiance against our unique US culture, have in fact been fed by and protected by that same culture they revile. It is in fact ironic that they speak against the very thing that has protected them from those whose memories they invoke as guidons for their hate-riddled actions and speech.

Excerpt: Authorities in Ankara respond to separate bombings at a peace rally calling for an end of violence between Kurdish rebels and Turkish security forces, killing at least 86 and injuring 186 others, Turkey's Interior Ministry said.

Excerpt: Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. Prices for recyclable materials have plummeted because of lower oil prices and reduced demand for them overseas. The slump has forced some recycling companies to shut plants and cancel plans for new technologies. The mood is so gloomy that one industry veteran tried to cheer up her colleagues this summer with an article in a trade journal titled, “Recycling Is Not Dead!” While politicians set higher and higher goals, the national rate of recycling has stagnated in recent years. Yes, it’s popular in affluent neighborhoods like Park Slope in Brooklyn and in cities like San Francisco, but residents of the Bronx and Houston don’t have the same fervor for sorting garbage in their spare time.

Excerpt: Behind these policies is the superstitious belief that vigorous physical contact and make-believe violence will beget immediate and future real physical harms -- magical thinking that fundamentally misunderstands how children play and learn. Prohibiting rough-and-tumble play doesn’t make recess safer or kids less apt to hurt others. To the contrary, the bans deprive children of the very experiences they need to master peaceful social interactions. Roughhousing is more than good exercise. Psychological research shows that it’s essential to childhood development. Rowdy, physical play teaches kids to communicate verbally and nonverbally; to take turns; to negotiate rules; and to understand when they can use their full strength and when they need to hold back. (We are raising a nation of wussy-boys who are going to be lunch for the barbarians in the world. ~Bob)

Excerpt: If Keystone XL is killed, history will remember U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision as at best a hollow victory. Certainly it will not shut down Alberta’s oil sands production; much of its 2.3 million barrels of crude per day will find its way across Canada and into the U.S. through trains and other pipelines, as it is now. What slowdown in production has occurred can probably be attributed as much to a $50 per barrel oil price as to tightening pipeline capacity. ... Should Obama cancel Keystone XL, then it will look like what it is: a small and petty parting shot from a weak and weakened president.

What a U.S.-Russian War in Syria Could Look Like. The war in Syria started as a civil conflict, became a regional meltdown and molted into an international crisis. Here's how it could evolve into a world war.

You would think the anti-Christmas crowd would wait until there’s frost on the pumpkin patch before pillaging and plundering our long-cherished yuletide traditions. But the Freedom From Religion Foundation has been chomping at the bit to bully those who celebrate the birth of Jesus. In recent days they’ve filed a federal lawsuit demanding an Indiana school district yank a Living Nativity from a Christmas production and they successfully forced an Oregon school district to ban choirs from performing at a Catholic shrine. (Further proof of Christian persecution in US. "The land of the free and the home of the brave"--NOT any more. It's a wonder stores even purchase Christmas items for sale in US any more. Fact they are putting them out before Halloween suggests expected economic downturn. --Barb)

Excerpt: “Last week, a 14-year-old Syrian boy told of how the mammoth extremist chopped off his hand and foot because he refused to join ISIS. Omar – who was captured fighting for a rebel group and tortured for more than a month – said the Bulldozer gathered a large group of children to watch the bloody amputation. He told Channel 4 news: ‘They put my hand on a wooden block and cut if off with a butcher’s knife. Then they cut off my foot.'” “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.” (Qur’an 5:33) Not that this has anything to do with Islam, you greasy Islamophobe.

Excerpt: Scott Tran, 44, owner of Tran Pharmacy, submitted hundreds of false claims for a solution used in inhalers for cystic fibrosis patients in the names of his customers' children, according to prosecutors. Tran submitted 399 claims for reimbursement between May 2009 and February 2015, stating they had been ordered by six Lincoln-area doctors identified only by their initials, documents show.

The Gun Industry Is Absolutely Booming in the US – And It May Have an Unlikely Person to Thank

Excerpt: Despite Obama’s attempts to enact more gun control measures, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) released its 2015 Report on Firearms and Commerce in the U.S. And the results on firearm manufacturing are revealing. According to the report, 5.5 million firearms were produced in 2010 compared to 2013, when the amount of firearms manufactured doubled to 10.9 million.

Excerpt: Time for Obama to tell us again about how they’re falling back and nearing defeat. Meanwhile, in real life no one is even fighting the Islamic State. The Russians are fighting other jihadis who are trying to topple Assad, and the Americans are restricting their activities to cosmetic airstrikes.

Excerpt: President Obama has pulled the USS Theodore Roosevelt out of the Persian Gulf, due to concerns in Washington over the Russian missile capability, says a military commentator.

Worth reading: A Liberal’s Ten Commandments. To better advance their causes, liberals should follow these modest Ten Commandments to live the rather "progressive" lives that they advocate for the rest of us. By Victor Davis Hanson

Excerpt: American antitank missiles supplied to Syrian rebels are playing an unexpectedly prominent role in shaping the Syrian battlefield, giving the conflict the semblance of a proxy war between the United States and Russia, despite President Obama’s express desire to avoid one.

Excerpt: ...Farrakhan announced his desire for reparations for blacks, telling the crowd: “Americahas no future for you or me.Americaneeds to let black people go. … We’re asking the federal government for 100 million acres” for black people to live separate from whites.

Excerpt: Members of Congress and many privacy advocates are busy selling the public on the Email Privacy Act by rightly claiming that government bureaucrats must first get warrants from neutral judges before they may obtain and read our emails. The trouble is, as reported by The Daily Caller (“House Bill Lets Bureaucrats Read Your Email Without A Warrant”), this bill re-authorizes, blesses and encourages the very types of violations of the Fourth Amendment its proponents so righteously claim they are stopping — and even more. To call the selling of this bill false advertising is being generous. It’s more like selling out the rest of America to protect special interests.

Excerpt: A new Fox News poll shows Hillary Clinton holding a comfortable lead against her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination -- but, when it comes to head-to-head matchups against the top Republican candidates, it's bad news for Clinton as Vice President Joe Biden appears to be more electable.

Excerpt: It is not hard to figure out why Republicans want Hillary Clinton and Democrats want Donald Trump as their opponent in 2016. Fortunately for the Republicans, they have a much greater chance of dumping their current front-runner than the Democrats do of ridding themselves of Clinton. In match-ups against the GOP candidates in the latest Fox News poll, Clinton loses to Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson. Vice President Joe Biden beats them all, including Trump, by double digits.

Excerpt: Nor have Britain, China, Germany, France and Russia, who were involved in the so-called P5+1 talks that produced the JCPOA, deemed it necessary to provide the Obama "deal" with any legal basis of their own. Obama's partners have simply decided that the deal he is promoting is really about lifting sanctions against Iran and nothing else.(BHO so desperately wants this to be his legacy that he is willing to gamble with the security of the US, Israel, other Western nations, and perhaps the world, while (Garnering favor with his brethren. --JB)

Excerpt: Keep in mind, in the days before Playboy landed on magazine racks (the 1950s) women's' nudity was very, very taboo. Playboy chief executive, Scott Flanders is quoted in The Times here: "That battle has been fought and won ... you're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free." Flanders is saying that, essentially, the internet has made the thrill of eyeballing naked women "passé," and that Playboy can no longer let that be its primary commodity. (Well, my father always said he only read it for the articles. Me, too, of course. In truth, I haven’t purchased a copy in at least 25 years. The article doesn’t say, but the implication is that nudity in some versions of Playboy online may still be found; we’ll have to wait to see. The scariest thing in the article is the circulation figures they quote–and you’ll never believe what magazine has the highest circulation in the USA, but Bob H and I no longer get it. Ron P. The AARP magazine is high not because people read it, but because they belong to get a couple bucks off here and there. I quit AARP when they sold out the members for Obamacare for their insurance company. As to Playboy, I gave up on it several decades ago--I can't stand faux boobs or fairy-tail politics. I like the "girl next door." The bimbo next door not so much. ~Bob )